Google: we compromised our principles

Was going into the Chinese market the right thing to do for Google? One of its …

Although Google's informal corporate motto is "Don't be evil," the "different kind of company" has found itself the target of criticism for some of its actions. Most notable is its decision to capitulate to censorship demands made by the Chinese government in order to secure a google.cn web address and operate freely in the country.

Google cofounder Sergey Brin says that the company may ultimately decide to bail out of the Chinese market if it becomes too uncomfortable with the way things are going there. Saying that the Chinese government insisted on "a set of rules that we weren't comfortable with," Brin described Google's decision to set up shop in China as a difficult one that "compromised its principles."

Brin was visiting Capitol Hill to lobby Congress for 'Net neutrality legislation to prevent telcos and other ISPs from instituting tiered service that would prioritize some traffic over the rest. As a company that stands to lose out if consumers' ability to access it is hindered, Google has begun playing the Washington lobbying game in an attempt to get Congress to enshrine network neutrality into law.

Google has been on Capitol Hill before—back in February, representatives from the company along with Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco were hauled before the House Committee on International Relations and read the riot act over their activities in China. At the time, Google VP Elliot Schrage defended the company's actions, saying that the company believed its actions "will ultimately benefit users in China."

Brin offered a less-strident defense of Google's decision, asserting that by compromising its principles, the search giant could "provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and perhaps make more of a difference." For now, the company will work on improving google.cn—which has a number of search results censored by the Chinese government—before deciding whether to leave the market altogether. For Google, it's google.cn or nothing; google.com has become increasingly difficult to reach from inside the great firewall of China.

Given the last 17 years or so of Chinese political history, it seems highly unlikely that the Chinese government is going to have a change of heart about censorship and the Internet. If that indeed turns out to be the case, Google is going to be faced with a hard choice: be true to its principles and pull out of the country, or stay and try to tap into what will become the world's largest market. The corporate philosophy may say "you can make money without doing evil" and the heart may say disengage, but the head has over a billion reasons to stay entrenched in China.